What Steven Yeun Loved About Glenn On The Walking Dead

There are a lot of things you would think an actor or actress would appreciate about being on a popular series like The Walking Dead. Although the AMC drama is known for killing off characters, there's still the possibility of a job with longevity as well as pay upgrades. The cast seems like a tight-knit family, and the popularity of the series has helped a lot of the show's leads to become household names. Regardless, Walking Dead actor Steven Yeun recently revealed there's one other thing he loved about playing Glenn on the series. Here's what he had to say:

I've had the privilege and great honor to play a character like this that didn't have to answer to anything other than his own character. He didn't have to answer to why he was so Asian, or why he did that or this based on his being Asian. None of that mattered, it just mattered who he was as an individual. That was the most important thing. We went into so many households around the world, and people got to see what it's like to be an Asian-American person, and they got to see an Asian-American person completely normalized as they are. And it got to a point where most people didn't even acknowledge the fact that he might be ethnically different than them.

Over the past few decades, both the major networks and their cable competitors have worked to incorporate more viewpoints and more voices into programming. This collective effort has greatly helped viewers begin to see a wider array of personalities and cultures, but because these characters are sometimes still few and far between, many of them end up spending a disproportionate amount of screen time talking about their gender or their race or whatever it is that makes them different. With Glenn, however, the character's time on The Walking Dead mostly focused on his skills and personality. He was an Asian-American, of course, but first and foremost, he was a survivor. That's a great thing for audiences to see, and it's obviously something Steven Yeun is very proud of from what he told EW.

Unfortunately, like all good things on The Walking Dead, Steven Yeun's time on the series has now passed. During last weekend's Season 7 premiere, the actor bit the dust thanks to Negan's whims. He later said that he was happy that the AMC drama chose to write the character out similarly to the comics, where Negan also gave Glenn a face full of Lucille. Along with Glenn, Negan also took out Abraham.

The Walking Dead is expected to return for it's second episode of the season on Sunday. That episode is supposed to be lighter fare than Week 1, which was one of the heaviest episodes of The Walking Dead, ever. Tune in on Sunday at 9 p.m. ET to find out how Season 7 continues to pan out. And if you'd like to know more about what's going, you can take a look at our Season 7 guide.